10th Clowning & Caring in Ecuador

1 week in January 2020 | Quito, Ecuador

Dates will be announced in the Summer. Sign up onto the Waiting List to get updates
and get offered a priority spot, click -> HERE!

Dear Clowns!!! Come clowning, loving, playing, laughing at the equator line, where the hemispheres of care and activism join together to re-design our caring characters and a new desirable society! Patch Adams MD and the clowns-performers-composers of the School for Designing a Society invite you to join them in the annual clown trip to Ecuador, for daily clowning in hospitals, clinics and streets, clown-skill-building workshops, and red noses amazement! Everyone is welcome, no experience is necessary.

The Experience

Ecuador, on the equator in northwestern South America, is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries, hosting a great variety of endemic species of flora and fauna. Its 2009 constitution is the first in the world to ensure Rights of Nature (ecosystem rights). The capital city of Quito (where we’ll be) has been named a World Heritage Site for having the best maintained and least changed historic city center in Latin America. The tour will combine daily clowning with daily workshops in care and inquiry into the locale of our clowning. In addition to clowning and care in clinical settings, there will be daily practical workshops in clown technique, love strategy, care and reflection on where we are. Patch Adams will offer two workshops and lead the trip for two days.

Themes

Introduction to humanitarian clowning — a way to bring love close.

Reframing Clowning: Patch’s lecture on all that clowning can be, plus conversation

“Care”: a 5-hour workshop with Patch on care — of self and others. All exercises. Sweetly intense.

Clown techniques: Workshops in play and imagination. Role play with performers workshop. The art of engaging people through humor and performance techniques.

Where are we? Local activists in Global Peace and Justice movements offer background on unique aspects of Costa Rican society. Clowning not only as action but as curiosity and observing.

Instructors/Facilitators

Patch Adams — entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change; promotes and practices living a life of public joy as a revolutionary act; fount of ideas for avoiding burn-out in long-term social justice and health. Enthusiator.

Susan Parenti — composer, tap dancer, accordionist, activist. Familiar with the words “idealist’, ‘romantic’, ‘unrealistic’. Writes theater plays on how she wishes people would speak, rather than how they do actually speak.

Schedule

The detailed day-to-day itinerary of the trip will be available when we get closer to the event, but this is what a typical day looks like:

Breakfast at the hotel

Travel by bus to clown at hospital, orphanage, or nursing home

Lunch

Afternoon activity (workshop, reflection, lecture)

Dinner

After dinner group activity

Want to Participate?

Dates will be announced in the Summer. Sign up onto the Waiting List -> HERE!Cost: $1550 covers food, lodging, all educational and clowning events, and transportation within the country. This fee does not include your transportation to Ecuador.
Space on this trip is limited.
We register participants on a first come first serve basis.

Please do not fill out the form unless you are prepared to make your deposit.

3) Your Deposit is Non-Refundable. Please have your final payment made before December 13th, 2018. Thanks!

Flights: Please arrive to Quito International Airport by the evening of January 13 – Book your flight back home any time on January 20.

Passports: No visa is required, check this link for all the requirements and any exception related to your country. Passports can be expedited by your local post office. Please bring two color photocopies of your passport with you.

Vaccines: The following vaccines are recommended: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) and Tetanus-diphtheria. More info here. Please talk to your doctor about the recommended vaccinations for travel to Ecuador. We will not be in any areas of the country where Malaria is a possibility.